Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 26th, 2009

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everybody, for being here today.

I have just a few questions. In your presentation on page 6, you talk about “the building blocks of integrated energy systems”. The second one is an “enabling platform of higher density, mixed use developments”.

I guess I'm going to follow Mr. Anderson's line of questioning. I've just now realized that my riding is mostly remote, I guess, since I don't have any communities of 10,000 people, but there are a number of sawmills, pulp mills, and such things that are interested in pursuing some of these community energy types of ventures. What kinds of projects are you working on? Are there any in these small communities of 500 or 1,000 people so they can take advantage of some of these types of projects?

[Michael Cleland]

I'm going to see if Mr. Lee wants to pick this one up, because this is close to his expertise, but maybe I'll make just a couple of points.

It's going to depend on the circumstances, and density makes it easier. Mixed use makes it easier because you have different energy loads being required at different times, and you have heat that you can use.

It's not that there's any one set of circumstances where you can't do it at all. There are different circumstances that facilitate it. The sawmill probably provides a pretty good anchor for the kind of thing you want to do, but it depends a little bit on the actual physical configuration of the community.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Lee, would you like to add to that?

[Kevin Lee]

Yes. I think that's a good answer. It blends with what I was saying a little bit earlier about it being applicable to all towns, to single-industry towns, and to a town where the arena is the big energy user. In terms of density, even main street, small town Canada provides a certain amount of density for shared systems and shared opportunities.

A residential development that is in more of a suburban or rural sprawl type of development does become less amenable to community systems, simply because of infrastructure costs and because of losses in distributing heat and that sort of thing. It's still possible.

I think one of the messages with QUEST, though, is that if we're going to get serious about energy, we need to be really rethinking even how we lay out rural communities and that sort of thing, or finding the best technological solutions that bring us this integrated piece to create the energy savings you would get otherwise from different configurations.

One of the pieces about QUEST in looking at this is not more of the same, not more sprawl, and not more design of this nature without thinking about the energy consequences and how you're going to deal with this. A solar system with storage in the Okotoks example, in Drake Landing, is pretty suburban, but we're able to get 52 houses heated off a central system, so it's not out of the question. But it does say, “Let's rethink”--and that means rethink urban, rethink rural, rethink remote, and rethink suburbia, all of those pieces together.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

My second question is with respect to some of the challenges in quantifying the overall benefits of these systems. One of the things I think Carol had mentioned was that you were doing a study with various communities in terms of how to measure the energy consumption of these communities. It would seem to me to be a logical step to define the metrics for how successful we can actually be in this. That ends up being the challenge--to determine how we know there's a benefit.

How is the research to develop this going across these communities, and are we any closer to developing metrics for how successful this program could be?

[Kevin Lee]

It's been identified as a really important piece of work for us. There are all kinds of different metrics out there right now. It's not that this kind of thing has never been measured, but the question is how to measure it in a standardized way, an accepted way, and how to start getting at all of the different elements on a regular basis. For example, some of the issues that we've run into in the measurement of these things are privacy issues, because you're now starting to look at the community as opposed to individual houses, if you will, for which homeowners says yes, come in, do an assessment of my home. We'll run computer models on this specific house, and that's all taken care of. Once you start getting into larger blocks of data, you have to start dealing with privacy issues. You don't necessarily have access to utility information, which would make things really simple. And then there are other aspects of measurement. We term it bottom-up measurement, which is looking from the individual house and working your way up. Then there's top-down, which is macroeconomic. Communities end up right in the middle, and often the top-down and bottom-up analysis don't blend very well.

So we're working on all these different aspects at the community level to find the best way of measuring them and then standardizing them in such a way that communities across Canada can use them from a design perspective and so that different governments in Canada can use at them a policy level and can use this measurement system as an appropriate tool.

How are we doing on it? There are different measurement systems now being used out there. We're in the early stages of trying to come up with a standardized one to use. Certainly the more demonstrations that are done, the more field trials that are done, the more applications there are to do, and this kind of thing, the more quickly we'll be able to advance on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Allen.

Madam Bonsant.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

You talk about energy savings and I hope that some of you came here in a carpool or took the bus.

Mr. Harcourt, you mentioned QUEST from November 2008. Is the report available? I have QUEST 1 but I do not have QUEST 2.

[Michael Harcourt]

The answer is yes. We developed a number of likely scenarios for Canada, all the way from those that failed to hit greenhouse targets--one scenario was “We Tried and Failed”, another one was called “Hidden Joules”, where there are pilot projects in municipalities and communities across the country that are doing it on their own--to the two that did succeed, and one was called “MegaWHAT?”--

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I only have five minutes, Mr. Harcourt, and I have lots of questions. Just tell me yes or no. Could this report to be distributed to the members of our committee?

[Michael Harcourt]

Yes.

[Michael Cleland]

The final translation will be ready Monday.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

All right, that would be great. I see that there are many partners in your program. Does the present government listen to you? In the last budget, there was money for renovations but nothing for renewable energy. Do you have any comment about this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

It's up to you gentlemen whether you have an answer or not.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I would like to know if the government listens to you, if money is available because we did not see anything about that in the budget.

[Michael Cleland]

There's not a very precise answer to your question. Quite clearly our view is that there are some things in the budget that we think, as the programs are shaped, as they're developed, and as they're approved, can be done to make them effective in supporting the kinds of technologies, including what you've just described.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Ms. Buckley, you have something to add to that?

[Carol Buckley]

It's just a quick comment. In Budget 2009 there was a five-year green infrastructure fund. I don't have the details. It's not my department, but it was one of the elements of the budget.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I am asking this question because we sometimes see reports about green buildings that cost a fortune. I'm not sure that businesspeople would want to invest in buildings that cost a lot of money because renting space by the square foot is not cost-effective. I was wondering if you were aware of anything in the budget. The idea is extremely interesting about it is also very expensive.

You keep mentioning energy savings for individuals. I would like to know what you think of the fact that here, this evening, lights are on in all the federal buildings, that car engines are left running in summer for air conditioning and in winter for heating. Do you not think that the government should be a model for Canadians?

[Carol Buckley]

I'm going to limit my answer to my area of responsibility, and that is to improve energy efficiency. I do have responsibility for the federal buildings initiative. It uses private sector financing to fund energy efficiency projects in federal buildings, which helps improve energy use and save energy. It's a fairly modest but successful program in terms of helping those projects take place.

I'd like to speak a little bit to the point you made about energy efficient or green ecological buildings costing a lot. We ran a program for eight years for new buildings where we subsidized the cost of the energy efficient design, in fact helping support the capacity in the economy for the LEED building assessments. Our program still does the assessment for LEED. We determined, over thousands of buildings, that the cost premium can be very small--it can be zero--and can be recovered very quickly.

So one of our objectives as the federal government is to try to get the information out there that sometimes to be green is not necessarily to be very much more expensive, and that certainly it will save energy over the life of the building.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Do you have any contacts with architectural firms or architects who could build these buildings and try to sell their ideas to large cities? In my riding, the largest city has 6,700 inhabitants. There is a small farm community of 112 inhabitants. So, when you talk about energy efficiency, it is as if you were telling me that we should close all those small communities. Thinking about energy density and of closing small communities—according to me—you are going to increase urban sprawl, which means higher energy use, more water use and more transportation. That is not the solution. That is why one has to be careful when referring to the density of our communities. It is a very special situation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Ms. Buckley, go ahead.

[Carol Buckley]

I take your points with respect to small communities. I would just repeat what both my colleague and my colleagues from QUEST have been saying: we think these principles can be applied in different sizes of organizations.

Apart from that, my office does run a program oriented to small buildings and small industry, with a financial incentive to help put in place the energy efficiency investments so often overlooked by very small entities. We'd be happy to give you information about that for your constituents' use.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Merci, Madame Bonsant.

Now the last questioner, Mr. Shory, for up to five minutes.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Buckley, you mentioned three community integrated energy systems. Can you please take us through these examples and highlight how these projects are cleaner and greener?